In Episode IV, An Ineffable Hope, Lucas and Joel discuss “Experience” by Robert Sharf, a chapter from Critical Terms for Religious Studies (1998). They rehash the genealogical critique of the colonial history of “pillar” categories in religious studies and wonder why Sharf seems to put the blame on the colonized rather than the colonizers. Lucas questions the force of the critique from another angle, the presumed relationship between specific forms of thought (e.g. subject-object epistemology) and colonial-political agendas and points out that there’s only a problem with discourse about mystical experience if one assumes discourse about mystical experience is a problem. Joel rants again about recourse to scientific naturalism in religious studies and points out that Sharf might fall victim to his own critique of so called “mirror of nature” (subject-object) epistemology when Sharf writes that alien abductions can’t be studied because they have no real object to which they refer. He also gets bummed out by Sharf’s targeted application of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Finally, Lucas admits that whether or not he believes mystical experiences are real depends on how much he’s contemplating his own finitude on a given day, and Joel says that the question of “reality” isn’t necessarily the important question to ask.

The Seminar Room” (TSR) is a religious studies podcast by and for students and scholars of religion that engages specific texts and concepts in religious studies theory and method, philosophy and critical theory. Our regular contributors are Joel Harrison, Lucas Scott Wright and Sean Capener.

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